


Susannah Descending

by Edonohana



Category: Dark Tower - Stephen King
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-17 02:51:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13649904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/pseuds/Edonohana
Summary: Susannah Dean descends to the Underworld to get her ka-tet back.





	Susannah Descending

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scioscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/gifts).



Icy drops formed on the sides of Susannah’s can of Nozz-A-La. Eddie lay on the sofa with his head in her lap, and the condensation dripped down his cheek like tears.

_It’s not right._

Jake was writing an essay at the kitchen table, every now and then stopping to pet Oy, the stray dog he’d adopted. Oy wagged his tail and licked Jake’s hand. 

_None of this is right._

“Honey?” Eddie asked. “Is something wrong?” 

“Yes,” Susannah said. “Roland isn’t here.”

Jake glanced up. “Who’s Roland?”

“I don’t know,” she said. Like everything else she didn’t know. Couldn’t remember. 

Every morning she’d wake up to the sense that she’d had a dream of the utmost importance, a dream more real than her life, and yet she could never recall any of it but phantom sensations. An acrid smell like smoke and chemicals, like car exhaust but different. Something smooth as driftwood against her palm, and something hard nestled into the crook of her index finger ( _her trigger finger_ ), something that would move if she put pressure on it ( _squeeze don’t pull_ ).

Susannah looked down, avoiding Eddie and Jake’s puzzled gaze. The cold can of Nozz-A-La in her hand assumed the same strange weight as her dreams, as if it was vested with uncanny meaning. She could smile and say, “Never mind,” and she could go back to drinking her Nozz-A-La and stroking her true love’s hair. 

Or she could put down the can. And…

( _I aim with my eye_ )

And look. Really look. Look until she saw.

 _If I put down the can, I’ll go mad,_ Susannah thought wildly. _I’ll end up in an asylum. And then what happens to me, a legless black woman locked up alone in a place where not even white boys have any rights?_

Oh, but she wouldn’t be alone. Eddie and Jake would care for her. They’d still love her. They’d visit her every day.

Susannah slowly raised her gaze from the dripping can. Eddie and Jake were watching her. Jake’s eyes were blue, she knew they were blue, but the shadow from the overhead lamp made them look darker and gave them a chitinous gleam. Eddie’s hair felt coarse between her fingers, like the spiky hairs of a caterpillar. She jerked her hand away.

“Honey?” 

She only knew it was Eddie who had spoken because Jake wouldn’t call her that. His voice was distorted, unrecognizable. Blood began to trickle down his forehead, mixed with some oily black substance. Jake stood up. He was taller than she remembered, and his shirt bulged and pulsed as if he carried some monstrous, kicking fetus.

_I looked I looked I didn’t even have to put down the can_

Her wheelchair was in the bedroom; Eddie had carried her to the sofa. She was helpless, a poor crippled woman, a crippled madwoman—

_“You have forgotten the face of your father.”_

The voice was in her head, but not her own voice. It was Roland’s voice.

And with that, Susannah remembered everything in a rush, a flood, like awakening in an unfamiliar bed the first morning after a trip: _Oh. I’ve gone to the seaside._

_Oh. I left Roland to go through the Unfound Door, even though he warned me it might lead to todash space. Just like I said, I lit the darkness with thoughts of the ones I loved. Only I left him out, because no matter how hard I wished and imagined, I could never believe in a Roland who’d stop before he reached the Tower._

_Oh. The todash creatures are going to eat me now._

Susannah threw herself off the sofa. Behind her, she heard wet scraping sounds, as if some slimy thing was dragging itself across the floor. Well, she could get across a floor on her belly too, and fast. 

Something snagged in her skirt, jerking her to a halt. But she was almost to the bedroom. She braced her arms in the doorway and yanked herself forward. Her powerful biceps flexed, and she tumbled into the room. Quick as thought, she whipped around and flung herself at the door, slamming it behind her, then reared up and twisted the deadbolt into place. The door shuddered as the things she wished she hadn’t gotten that last glimpse of thudded into it. More, she wished she still had her gun.

But this was todash space. It had different rules than the world—than any of the worlds. She’d tossed her gun in the trash, thinking it was ruined anyway, but that had probably been as much an illusion as the snow and the hot chocolate and the trash can itself.

“Maybe I haven’t even moved,” Susannah said aloud. “Not now. Not ever. My gun could be right… There.”

Her gaze still fixed on the door, she reached out, making herself expect to find. Her hand closed over a smooth sandalwood grip. She didn’t have to look down to see that the barrel wasn’t clogged. Her gunslinger’s hand knew what it held. The gun was as beautiful and deadly as it had ever been.

Which meant that the door in front of her was probably _the_ door. If she could break the illusion, she could open it not to the monsters of todash space, but to a place of her own choosing.

But where would she choose to go? The grief she’d forgotten for so long—the grief that had led her to create a whole world where she could, for a time, forget—threatened to overwhelm her. Eddie and Jake and Oy were dead. Roland was gone. She could have been in todash space for fifty years, for a hundred, for an eternity. For all she knew, Roland was dead too. 

The door bowed inward, splintering around the lock.

 _I don’t care if they’re dead,_ Susannah thought. _I’ll find them anyway, if I have to harrow Hell itself!_

She spun her chair around, seized the photo of herself with the false Jake and Eddie and Oy that sat smiling by her bedside, and smashed it against the table. Susannah snatched up a shard and returned to the door. Dripping claws protruded through new gashes in it and worried at them, tearing the wood like cloth. She fired twice, and the claws fell away with a hissing gurgle.

Susannah scratched two words into the door: THE UNDERWORLD. 

The shard cut her fingers, and her blood filled the scrapes she made. As wet crimson stained the final letter, the door became an oval slab of gray granite with the letters carved into it with a chisel. A gravestone, big enough for her and her chair. 

“Well, that’s not ominous at all,” she remarked. 

On the other hand, it wasn’t as if it could lead anywhere worse than todash space. And her ka-tet was behind it. Susannah gave the slab a push. It revolved on an unseen axis, opening a doorway into darkness. She went through.

A shrill giggle met her ears. Susannah’s gaze jerked upward. She was in a vast cave, dimly lit by a grayish light of no identifiable origin. It was empty except for a throne roughly hewn from dark rock, and a man sitting in it. He wore a short black jacket with a hood that shadowed his eyes, but she could see two gleams in the darkness.

He thrust out his hand. It was heaped with translucent crimson beads. “Would you like some pomegranate seeds, little girl?” 

“I’ll pass,” said Susannah, now feeling on firmer ground. He was taunting her, but she was certain that had she eaten any, she’d be stuck there for a month in the year per seed. Which meant that he was playing by rules she understood. “I’ve come for my friends. And I won’t leave until you release them to me.”

“I could wait a long time.”

“So could I.”

Susannah waited. For a few minutes? An hour? A year? Time felt strange in the Underworld: strange and stretched, even more than in Mid-World. But she thought about her friends. And she waited.

“Oh, very well,” said the man in black. “I suppose letting you try for them will at least be less boring than sitting here and staring at each other.” 

He made a dramatic gesture. One wall melted away, revealing a vast plain under the same dim gray light as the cave. It thronged with dim gray figures, indistinct and indistinguishable, motionless and silent.

 _Illusion_ , Susannah thought, and prayed it was true. She couldn’t imagine any of her ka-tet being so lifeless, even in death. 

“Call to a soul, and he’ll come to you. But you can only call one name. Whoever looks up will be your prize. But just to speak to and to hold for a while. The dead stay dead, you understand.” His eyes gleamed with merriment, as if at his own cleverness. “Who will you choose? Your _dinh?_ Your true love? The son you never had? Whoever you call, I’ll throw in his little billy-bumbler too. I think that’s more than generous.”

Susannah’s heart sank. She couldn’t choose just one of them. She’d come to save them all. Maybe if she called out her own name, they’d all look? Then she remembered the name they all bore. 

“Gunslinger!” Susannah cried.

Three of the indistinct figures looked up, and something wriggled against the chest of the smallest one. 

The man in black looked sulky, but snapped his fingers. The thronged ghosts vanished, leaving only the solid, startled figures of Eddie, Roland, Jake, and Oy. They looked as they had when they’d seen each other last, but those who had been wounded were healed. And then they moved to each other. Eddie swept Susannah out of her heavy wheelchair, and she kissed him everywhere her lips could reach. Jake threw his arms around Roland, and Roland knelt and laid his head on Jake’s shoulder. Then their arms opened, caught, and closed again, pulling all five of them into a tight knot. Their tears soaked each other, but they were tears of joy, and there was laughter as well. 

“Am I dead?” Eddie asked. “I am, aren’t I?”

“Yes,” said Roland. “You are. At least, you were.”

Eddie gave a shaky laugh. “That’s not very reassuring.”

“I know I died,” Jake said quietly. “You don’t need to tell me about it.”

“Did you reach the Tower, Roland?” Susannah asked. 

“No. I assume I died before I reached it. I suppose it happened so fast I never knew it. A shot to the head, maybe.” Roland’s voice was cool; it was Eddie who shuddered. “But I can’t imagine that I could see the Tower and forget.” 

“I can’t either,” said Susannah drily. 

Eddie shot Susannah an anxious look, but she shook her head before he could ask. “No, sugar. When it was down to just me and Roland, I left. I thought I was going to be with you and Jake, but I ended up somewhere else. I opened a door to the Underworld to bring you all back into the sunshine.”

 _She went to fucking Hell itself to get me back,_ Eddie thought. He had the proof of a love like that right here in his provisionally-resurrected self, and yet it felt almost impossible to believe. How could he deserve a woman like that? 

“Wouldn’t have come all this way for a man who didn’t, sugar,” Susannah said, giving him a kiss. 

“I know it seems like too much,” said Roland. His faded blue eyes, still wet with tears, gleamed like aquamarines. “But I can tell you that we all feel that way.”

“Maybe we all deserve each other,” said Jake.

Eddie was startled for a moment, then remembered: _khef_.

“What a touching scene,” remarked the man in black. “And what a glorious quest. Doomed, of course. Death isn’t reversible, like a coat.”

“That is a very odd statement, coming from you,” Roland remarked. 

_There are rules here,_ Susannah thought. _Rules and tasks, riddles and challenges, true names and pomegranate seeds. And they’re not_ his _rules, either. He may make the details, but the framework is already there. Like a folk song. Stagger Lee might be called Stacker Lee or Stagolee, but he’s always a bad man and he always shoots Billy in a fight over a hat._

_This place has rules. And I think I know what they are._

“I’ll sing for our freedom,” she said. “If you like my song, you have to let us go. All of us.”

“You’re very well-read, my dear,” said the man in black. “And I must say that the Underworld is lacking in entertainment.”

“No pay-per-view,” said Eddie.

“No HBO,” said Jake.

“No radio,” said Susannah.

“No riddling contests,” said Roland.

“No pornos,” said Eddie. “I hope.”

“You’re a chatty bunch this go-round. All these turns of the wheel, it’s enough to make you dizzy. That ka-tet was too hard, this ka-tet is too soft. Where’s the ka-tet that’s just right?” The man in black giggled at his own joke, which none of his listeners understood. With a sigh, he looked at Susannah. “You may sing. But I choose the song. If you can’t sing it—the whole thing, no mistakes, and beautifully—you all stay. You included, nightingale. Deal?”

Before Susannah could agree, Roland broke in. “It must be a song that exists in her world.” 

“And no tricking her by asking for a song from after her time,” Eddie added. 

“Would I be so tricksy? You mistake me. I have no wish to sit and palaver with you five for all eternity in this dim dank cave. I’m more than happy to see you on your way, so _I_ can go where the action is. There’s great deals for high-rollers in Las Vegas. Luxury suites. Plenty of empty rooms.” He giggled. “So I’ll be more than fair. I’ll ask for a song that I _know_ she’s heard. Let me think of a pretty one we’ll all enjoy. If she can sing it, that is.”

While he pondered, snippets of songs played in Susannah’s mind like fifty radios tuned to different stations. Folk songs, pop songs, radio songs, lullabyes, commercials, songs sung by slaves and songs sung by little girls. 

_O Death, O Death, please spare me over for another year_

_There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole_

_Big girls don’t cry_

_She rose from her warm bed with a gun in each hand_

_Texas Red had not cleared leather when a bullet fairly ripped_

_This train is bound for glory_

_What walks down stairs, alone or in pairs, and makes a slinkety sound?_

_The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind_

“Ah!” The man in black gave her a gleeful smile. “Long enough to be challenging, with a deep personal meaning for you, my dear—for all of you, really. Let’s have ‘Sister Light, Sister Dark.’”

Neither Eddie nor Jake had heard of it, and both shot nervous glances at Susannah. Roland could have sung it himself, though it was meant for a woman’s voice. He too looked to Susannah.

She had never heard of it either. For the briefest instant of panic, she thought, _It’s some old folksong my mother sang when I was so young I can’t remember, or the B-side of a single I never heard. Not a trick, but still impossible._

Then the icy calm she felt when she picked up her gun came over her. It had to be a song she’d heard. The Devil might trick you with double meanings, but he kept his own word. Double meanings… Tricks… The Devil… She found herself humming a bar from “Riddles Wisely Expounded,” which she’d first heard as “The False Knight on the Road.”

And then she had it. The man in black’s request must be for a song she knew, but by a different name. And once she realized that, she knew which one it must be. 

“Don’t expect the lyrics to be exactly the same as the ones you know,” Susannah warned him. “But it’s still the same song. Even in my world, it’s got variants.”

“Naturally,” said the man in black. “Sing it once, Sue. For old times’ sake.”

She dared not delay any longer. It _was_ a long song. But it was a fair request: she’d heard it enough to know it. Trusting in her memory, she began to sing. 

_There lived a lady by the North Sea shore_  
_Lay the bent tae the bonnie broom_  
_Two daughters were the babes she bore_  
_Fa la la la la la la la la la_

_As one grew bright as is the sun_  
_Lay the bent tae the bonnie broom_  
_So coal black grew the other one_  
_Fa la la la la la la la la la_

Her mind on nothing but the song, she thought no more of the comment on its “deep personal meaning.” But Roland, who unlike Susannah knew that “lay the bent tae the bonnie broom” meant braiding together stems of bentweed and flowering broom, found that remark to be both sinister and mocking. If he had a charm of bent and broom, he’d have tried throwing it at the man in black. Would he vanish in a puff of smoke, as he did when the light and dark sisters flung it at the Devil in the version of the song that Roland knew?

But she wasn’t singing the song that Roland knew. It was a different story entirely, though the tune was the same. The dark sister threw her bright twin into the sea to drown. A traveling minstrel found her stripped skeleton on a desolate shore ( _Did-a-chuk?_ ) and made a harp of her breastbone, stringing it with her yellow hair ( _Bird and bear and hare and fish_ ). 

_Deep personal meaning indeed,_ Roland thought grimly. He only hoped it wouldn't distract her from her task.

_He went into her father’s hall_  
_Lay the bent tae the bonnie broom_

Jake held Oy tight and thought, _It’s beautiful. He better not cheat and claim he didn’t like it._

_The harp began to play alone_  
_Fa la la la la la la la la la_

Eddie listened with tears in his eyes. By the third verse, he’d forgotten why Susannah was singing. He was back on that bleak and desolate beach with the lobstrosities asking their desperate questions, unanaswered and unheard, while he looked up at stars he’d never seen before and felt a love he’d never imagined.

_In terror sits the black-haired bride_  
_Fa la la la la la la la la la_

The last notes of the song echoed in the vaulted chamber. Eddie scrubbed at his eyes, then reached for Susannah’s hand. 

Roland stared down the man in black. “No need to announce her victory; we all heard it. Which way out?”

“Out!” barked Oy.

The man in black gave an annoyed flip of his hand. In the solid stone wall, two doors appeared, side by side. Both were made of richly carved wood, big enough to easily allow Susannah’s wheelchair to pass through. 

Pointing to the door on the right, he declared, “Door number one! It leads to a path. At the end of the path is a clearing. And in that clearing are people all of you would like to see; you especially, Roland. In the clearing, there is song and shade and companionship, there is love and peace forever, and most of all, there is rest. Sounds like something you all might want; you especially, Roland.”

“Not particularly,” said Roland. “I’m not so weary yet.”

“Oh?” The man in black peered at him, then tittered. “No, I suppose not yet. You’ve barely scratched the surface of what weariness means. You’ve set your alarm one hour early for Daylight Savings, not taken a red-eye flight across time zones and not caught a wink. But the flights will come, one after another till you never want to travel again.”

Roland ignored the references he didn’t know. He understood well enough. “And the other door?”

“A door to a door,” said the man in black. With another giggle, he said, “There’s always a door number three! And that’s the one you’re looking for: that one leads out.”

Jake, suspicious of a trap, asked, “To life?”

“Oh, yes. Absolutely, that door leads to life. You’ll have to open it yourselves, and it won’t be easy. But if you don’t want to stay here and you don’t want your tale to come to a premature end, that’s the door for you.”

“New car,” muttered Eddie. “Or goat?” 

In a perfect Monty Hall impression, the man in black inquired, “Would you like to switch to door number one?”

Unamused, Roland said, “We would not. And we’ve had enough of you.”

He led his ka-tet to the door. Wary of rules, Susannah whispered, “Don’t look back. None of you. Not ever, till we’re free of this place.”

The door slammed behind them with a menacing boom. 

“Do not look back!” Roland cried.

They froze. All of them, even Susannah, had felt the impulse to see what the door looked like on the other side. They were on a narrow ledge of stone, barely wide enough for her wheelchair. Below them a swift-moving river ran through a canyon, its waters clear and impossibly deep. And at the bottom of the river, embedded in gray stone, was a door. 

Only Susannah and Roland had the vision to see the symbol carved on the door, and that only faintly. It appeared to be a circle. 

“I knew it was too easy,” Jake said glumly. “No wonder he said that song had personal meaning—it’s all about being drowned.”

“ _Deep_ personal meaning,” added Eddie. “Oh, he’s a card, that one.”

“Even if we don’t drown, our shells will be ruined,” Jake said.

“Better that than dead,” said Susannah. “We’ll get more.”

“I think we can get through,” Roland said. “But the current is fast and the water is deep. We'll need to weight ourselves down with something heavy, or we'll be swept away before we ever reach it.”

“Suze’s wheelchair,” said Eddie with feeling, remembering how he’d nearly given himself fifteen hernias shoving it along the beach. “It doesn’t get any heavier than that.”

“We could tie ourselves to it,” suggested Jake. “With our belts and Roland’s gunbelts.”

Though all of them had misgivings, there seemed to be no choice but between the risk of being trapped and drowned versus the near-certainty of at least one of them being swept away and drowned. They lashed themselves to the wheelchair, each by an ankle to leave their hands free, except for Susannah, who tied her left wrist. Oy gave an unhappy bark, but allowed himself to be nestled inside Jake’s shirt, which he then secured with another belt under his arms. 

“Wait,” Susannah said abruptly. “The river. The river of the Underworld. This is all from Greek mythology. I knew when the man in black offered me pomegranate seeds when I first arrived.”

Roland knew a number of stories that Susannah would have considered “Greek mythology,” though he thought of them merely as “children’s tales.” But though he did know a story involving six pomegranate seeds, he had not heard the one about the singer who tries to ransom his lover from the land of the dead. Nor had he ever heard that it had rivers. 

But Jake frowned as he nodded. “The River Lethe. I remember it from Piper. If we drink any of the water, we’ll lose our memories.”

“Maybe,” said Susannah. “There’s more than one river. But it would be like him to show us to the river of forgetfulness without warning us, wouldn’t it?”

Eddie glanced nervously downward. He didn’t like heights, and he didn’t like the idea of being tied up underwater, and he liked the thought of losing his memories least of all. “I don’t know about this. Are we really going to be able to fall all that way, land just right, open the door, and go through without ever getting any water in our mouths?” 

“I believe that we can,” Roland said calmly. Then his face lit with one of his rare, beautiful smiles. “And if Susannah could come all this way to pull us from death itself, then I also believe that we were not meant to be parted. Even if we drink the river dry, ka will lead us to each other once again.” 

They maneuvered the wheelchair to the edge of the cliff, where it would fall just beside the door, then stood and filled their lungs.

“Nineteenth time’s the charm,” Eddie remarked. 

“What’s that?” Roland asked sharply.

The words had felt like an old catch-phrase or familiar quote when he’d said them. _Early bird catches the worm. A deer has to be taken with one shot._ He couldn’t recall where he’d heard it, but that was the way with those things, wasn’t it? He shrugged. “Got me. Like ‘third time’s the charm.’ Do you say that in Mid-World?”

“We do,” said Roland. “I thought of it when we found the third door to your world, Eddie. And it was the charm. It brought us Jake.”

Jake managed a smile as he peered over the edge. He didn’t mind the height at all. He’d just remember to keep his jaw clenched shut once they fell. “Ready to go?”

“Go!” barked Oy.

They flung themselves over the edge. They tumbled once, twice, three times through the air, then struck the water. It was cold, so cold that they all felt the impulse to gasp, but resisted it. Dragged down by the weight of the chair, they sank rapidly but gently, finally coming to rest beside the door. The symbol that had seemed to be a circle was a snake swallowing its tail: an ouroboros.

The knob wasn’t quite in anyone’s reach. Using khef and their experience working as a team, they gently worked the chair closer, tipping it as much as they dared, until Roland, who was both closest and had the longest arms, could reach the knob. 

The door swung inward. 

Susannah’s lungs screamed for air. Her chest was on fire, her ears were plugged, and the fingers of her left hand had been mashed between the wheel and Roland’s gun. But she was a gunslinger, she could turn her mind away from pain and work, and she and the ka-tet moved as one beneath the water, rocking and jerking the wheelchair, sliding it along the open doorframe to align it enough to go in. 

She didn’t mean to look through. None of them did. Roland because it didn’t matter where the door led when they’d have to go through regardless, Susannah because she didn’t want her focus split, Eddie because he didn’t want to be distracted from his task by some vista of horror or wonder, and Jake because he knew he’d be less afraid if he looked at Roland. But the open door gaped. And, not quite simultaneously but almost, they all looked. 

The scenes came in flashes— _Quick-cuts_ , thought Eddie and Jake, and _A slide-show_ , thought Susannah. Roland thought of a lightning-fast hand in a black sleeve laying out a spread of cards. 

Oy, starved and bloody, his fur matted and his tail trailing limp in the dust.

 _Who hurt him?_ Jake thought, a cold anger rising in him like a tide. _I’ll kill him._

Eddie, thin and hollow-eyed, pushing a needle into his thigh.

 _A junkie?_ Susannah thought. _Not my Eddie!_

Susannah, her face a barely recognizable mask of hatred, cackling with vicious laughter as she shoved away some bare-assed white man.

 _Who_ is _that?_ Eddie thought. _That can’t be my Suze! A sister? No, she’s an only child. A cousin?_

Roland, his face cold and hard, turned his back on Jake and let the boy fall into an abyss.

And for Roland watching, the pain and horror was worst of all. For after the first reflexive denial ( _But Jake wasn’t with me when I crossed those mountains_ ) he was also the first to sense the truth. After all, his denial had not been _I would never_. 

Roland thought, _That is my future. If I go through that door, I’ll let the boy I love die. For the Tower, I suppose._

_Better I drown here._

_It’s the doorway to Hell,_ Susannah thought. _We’ve made a terrible mistake. And we can’t go back. We’ll drown before we can free ourselves and reach the surface!_

Her horror was such that she breathed out an automatic “No!” 

Bubbles arose from her lips, but her denial and that of her companions was lost in the river, which had received many such protests, all too late. And though they closed their mouths quickly, water rushed in, filling their throats.

In the instant before Susannah swallowed, she remembered all the worst moments of her life. Eddie, dying in her arms from the terrible wounds inflicted by Shardik’s great claws. Oy, falling from the bridge. Jake, vanishing in a haze of red on the other end of the bridge. The heartbreak in Roland’s eyes as she turned away from him and toward the door. She was glad to feel the cool touch of the river Lethe, washing her mind clean. 

The wheelchair, already nearly in, rocked in the current. And went over. Instinctively clutching each other, five strangers passed through the open door. 

Not one of them looked back.


End file.
